
And Life Goes On1992
Both directed by Abbas Kiarostami, and both with commentary by Jonathan Rosenbaum and Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa


Internationally revered Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami has created some of the most inventive and transcendent cinema of the past thirty years, and CLOSE-UP is his most radical, brilliant work. This fiction-documentary hybrid uses a sensational real-life event—the arrest of a young man on charges that he fraudulently impersonated the well-known filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf—as the basis for a stunning, multilayered investigation into movies, identity, artistic creation, and existence, in which the real people from the case play themselves. With its universal themes and fascinating narrative knots, CLOSE-UP has resonated with viewers around the world.
Jay Duplass
Sep 2025
1 streaming audio track
Commentary: Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa and Jonathan Rosenbaum
Included in
Photographer’s Gaze
Position 8
Included in
Sight and Sound’s Greatest Films of All Time: Directors’ Poll
Position 56
Included in
Sight and Sound’s Greatest Films of All Time: Critics’ Poll
Position 50
Included in
Josh and Benny Safdie’s Adventures in Moviegoing
Position 7
Included in
Film Plays Itself
Position 15
Streaming now, and why it pairs with this film

Both directed by Abbas Kiarostami, and both with commentary by Jonathan Rosenbaum and Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa
Or
via Criterion Collection
via Criterion Collection